


Water Lilies and Starry Night

by ladygray99



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Art museum, Gen, Ichabod Crane vs. the 21st Century, Modern Art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 06:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5406455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladygray99/pseuds/ladygray99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ichabod's art awareness ends in about 1770 and picks back up with The Bachelor and Call of Duty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Water Lilies and Starry Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ItsClydeBitches](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsClydeBitches/gifts).



"You want two days of vacation to look at art?"

"Not vacation time, just a couple days where I'm not at the top of the call list. Crain's never been to the MoMA or the Met, or the Guggenheim. His art awareness ends in about 1770 and picks back up with _The Bachelor_ and _Call of Duty_."

"I really do not get the relationship between you two."

"It's really, really complicated."

~

Ichabod looked up at the tower of glass. He had not particularly enjoyed Manhattan when the pace was set by the trot of a fast horse and personal space was dictated by the width of a lady's skirt. Now it was canyons of buildings, noise, and never ending bodies pressed against each other. Abbie had picked October to bring him since it would be out of the prime tourist season but not yet full of the holiday rush.

"This is an art museum?"

"Indeed it is. Come on." She pulled him through the revolving doors and into the vast open foyer. Ichabod took a deep breath. It felt like his first since they had arrived in Manhattan. Abbie paid for them and grabbed a map. It was still early. "I haven't been here in a few years but if I recall it's best to start at the top, grab lunch in the middle, take a break in the sculpture garden, then exit through the gift shop."

"I shall follow your lead." Ichabod was paying little attention to her. Instead his head was tilted back trying to take in the clean, vaulted, modern space. He'd been in larger rooms, vast cathedrals with their arches and sombre saints, but this was white and clean. Full of light.

Abbie took him by the elbow and led him towards the stairwell. Still looking up he froze under a spinning sculpture. He had tried to do some research before they arrived but Abbie insisted that he really should experience it all without pre-set ideas. This is a… [Calder](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/81621)?"

"Yep." 

"What is it made of?" He spun around slowly following the mobile over his head.

"Sheet metal and wire. Any halfway decent modern art museum has one. You can spot them a mile away."

"Sheet metal. And yet it looks so light." Ichabod had the strongest urge to climb up and touch it.

"You want your mind blown, I'll show you _Water Lilies_."

Abbie pulled him away from the Calder and herded him into the elevator. Just as rapidly she pulled him through the fifth floor gallery, giving him no time to look at the paintings that adorned the walls, and into a wide room. Ichabod stopped and simply breathed. He had read a bit on the impressionism movement (not overly impressed by it) and Monet before Abbie stopped him. The Water Lilies series had been prominently mentioned, but a picture of a picture could never hold a light to [what he was seeing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WLA_moma_Reflections_of_Clouds_on_the_Water-Lily_Pond_Monet.jpg). Done on three canvases the painting stretched from one wall to another. It invoked the water and heavens. The green of the water lilies and the pink clouds of an early morning sky. He sat on one of the low benches in front of it, trying to examine the details and at the same time take it all in, in a single glance. 

"Mind blown?"

"Indeed."

"Not exactly gilt framed family portraits on castle walls."

"No." Ichabod tried to picture it on a wall in his family estate but failed. "This work has obviously come from a very different time and artistic sensibility than mine."

Abbie sat down next to him. "We came here once on a school field trip when I was twelve or something. We were supposed to go to every floor and take notes about works we liked. I spent almost the entire trip in the room."

"There is a sense of peace in here."

"There is." Abbie put a hand on his shoulder. "But we don't have time to settle in it. There is a ton left to see on just this floor."

With a heavy reluctance Ichabod stood and allowed himself to be taken from the water lilies to a room with [melting clocks](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/79018?locale=en), [giant eyes](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/78938?locale=en), and a rather [poorly rendered foot](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/79341?locale=en). "This is… interesting."

"And these would be surrealists."

"They certainly are." Ichabod leaned close to the melted clocks. _The Persistence of Memory_ the painting was apparently called. There was something deeply unsettling about the clocks and strange creature laying across an alien beach. Perhaps it was his own status as a one way time traveler. He shivered slightly and moved on to a work that looked half-finished called _[Woman, Old Man, and Flower.](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/79326?locale=en)_

"I think World War One messed up a lot of artists. Even ones that weren't really in it. The whole first mechanized war, empires collapsing, royal families wiped out, people coming back alive who wouldn't have survived in an earlier war. Made for a weird time."

War had certainly left Ichabod a little 'weird' in his own right but he had not seen the full run of his war. Instead he was plucked out of the middle and dropped down centuries after the fact. He wondered if the rest of the museum was going to be like this, melted clocks and flecks on canvas. The next room did not give him lots of hope with a [fur covered tea set](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/80997?locale=en). But there was also a well rendered painting of a [woman with a monkey](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/79374?locale=en). 

"This is quite good?" There was something in the woman's eyes, an honest soft sorrow that drew him in closer. "Who is the artist?"

"You're looking at her. Frida Kahlo. Did lots of self portraits. Little weird but I don't think you get into a place like this without being a little weird."

Ichabod looked over at a [bust of a woman](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/81329?locale=en) who had a loaf of bread and an inkwell balanced on her head. "I am inclined to agree." The ants painted across the woman's face were nearly as unnerving as the melted clocks. He brushed at his own face, for a moment thinking he felt something crawl across it.

"I must say Lieutenant, I was not aware that you had such knowledge of contemporary art." 

Abbie shrugged. "I took a couple of art crime classes at the academy. I was never going to specialize in it but it was one of the few where you didn't end up looking at dead bodies."

"Art crimes?"

"Forgeries. Theft. There's a rough guess that a good ten percent of all art in museums are fakes, forgeries, or attributed to the wrong artist."

Ichabod looked around. Quite uncharitably he wondered who exactly would want to fake a picture of melting clocks, but he also considered the peace of the water lilies. 

"Of course people argue that if you can't tell the difference why should it matter, especially if the artist has been dead for a couple of centuries."

"Speaking as someone who dabbled in oils who has spent a few centuries dead I would be quite put out if someone attempted to replicate or take credit for my work."

Abbie smirked at him. "Especially if it was Jefferson."

"He better not have."

"Not that I'm aware of."

Ichabod was still a bit put out by Thomas. Not just for claiming Ichabod's whit as his own but for other ungentlemanly like behaviour he thought his former friend above.

The next few rooms were equally odd with unnamed [rough streaks of black across canvas](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/79234?locale=en), [Out of proportion nudes](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/78432?locale=en), and [a whole room](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/locations/39?locale=en) filled with something called cubism that gave Ichabod a bit of a headache as his eyes seemed determined to bring the paintings into unattainable focus. Even with those he did appreciate the effort that must have gone into making them. Through it Abbie filled in his knowledge of place and time. What the world was doing when paint was laid on rough cloth by artists long since dead. 

As they neared the elevators Ichabod noticed a number of people crowded around one painting. He waited for a few to move on before stepping in close. "It's called _[Starry Night](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/79802?locale=en)_. Probably the most famous painting in this place."

"It's exquisite." At first glance Ichabod might have been willing to dismiss it with the other oddities, perhaps even consider it childish with its over exaggerated crescent moon, but it took only a moment to realize the precision that went into each small stroke. The night sky not black but a dozen shades of blue swirling about, giving movement and light to what others would paint as cold stillness. He raised his hand for a moment wondering if he could feel the paint shift beneath his fingers if he were to touch it.

"Vincent van Gogh. Over two thousand works, only ever sold one then killed himself in a field in France."

"That is tragic." He clasped his hands behind his back lest he be tempted to reach out to that swirling star field. 

"The Met has more of his work. I think they're hanging next to all of Degas ballet dancers. I'll show you tomorrow." She put a hand to his elbow and gently tugged. "Come on. We've still got four more floors, a sculpture garden and a gift shop to go through today."

Ichabod looked around the room. There was another painting, this one [of trees](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/80013?locale=en), which must have been painted by van Gogh as well, [a woman asleep](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/80172?locale=en) while a lion prowled by, and a simple [stand of rocks and pine trees](http://www.moma.org/collection/works/78454?locale=en) made with just quick dabs of a brush. A sudden overwhelming feeling of bypassed history landed on his shoulders. He was well aware of how much things hand changed from the time of his birth to the present but even with research and the internet it had perhaps not fully occurred to him just how much was created in the time he slept. How many miles of canvas were painted? How many billions of words were written? He had done his best to learn the history of his adopted country and the world in general but dates and facts did not capture the mood of the populace the way these pictures did. 

"I'm not sure I will be able to truly appreciate all that is here within a single viewing. There is so much of it."

Abbie smiled at him. "Then you can always come back next weekend."


End file.
